and ben bernanke's press briefing at quarter past. the fed is expected to announce a new round of bond purchases as its latest program, operation twist, is set to expire at the end of the month. cnbc will begin at 12:00 p.m. eastern. >>> joining us is stewart richardson, partner at rpmg. the press conference -- we'll hear a fresh round of stimulus from the fed. how significant would that be? >> in my mind it's not that significant. i think as optics, people think this is another addition to the stimulus. the fact is that the fed for months and months and months when they go out to purchase longer term treasuries, they're trying to reduce the supply of those in the market and effectively swap short dated cash or other securities. north about 1.25%. whether they're holding reserves or selling the, say, two-year treasury at north of 2 5 basis points, it's effectively the same thing. they're printing 85 million a month and saying we're not doing a twist, we're doing an outright purchase. >> it's different if twist doesn't expand the balan